"Important to you!" Osborn rejoined. "But what about me and my friends?
One has come from London for a few days' sport."
"Then I'm sorry he has lost the afternoon," Kit interposed quietly. "But you well know the wages laborers get in the dale, and there are old folks and some sick at Allerby who need a good fire. The winter's hard and some of the cottages are very damp."
"The farmers pay the wages."
"None of them make much money. They pay what their rent allows."
"I don't force up the rents. They're fixed by the terms new tenants are willing to offer when a lease runs out."
"That is so," Kit agreed. "I don't know that my neighbors grumble much because the rule works on your side. But peat is plentiful and we don't see why it can't be used when coal is dear."
"I imagine you can see an opportunity of selling the right to cut it,"
Osborn sneered.
"We are willing to sell at the buyers' price. Anybody who can't pay may have the peat for nothing. None of the day laborers has paid us yet and none shall be forced to pay."
Osborn did not know whether he could believe this statement or not, but he said ironically, "Then it looks as if you were generous! However, you are not a friend of my agent's and no doubt see a chance of making trouble. When you meddle with my tenants you play a risky game, and they may find they were foolish to join you."
One of the farmers who had stood quietly by Peter Askew looked up with a slow smile; another's weather-beaten face got a little harder. They were seldom noisily quarrelsome, but they were stubborn and remembered an injury long. Peter, however, interposed: